Nikkhil Advani opened up recently about what went wrong with John Abraham and Sharvari’s Vedaa. He said that making the film ‘too entertaining with action and masala’ was a mistake. Nikkhil was in conversation with Darab Farooqui at Indian Screenwriters Conference (ISC) hosted by the Screenwriters Association of India (SWA) on Friday.

The film tells the story of a Dalit law student, who aspires to be a boxer to protect her family from upper-caste discrimination and abuse.

Speaking about what went wrong with it, Nikkhil said, "I made a mistake when I made a film on a Dalit girl who wants to do boxing but something happens at her home, as a result of which the upper caste comes after her. I knew no one wanted to watch a Dalit girl's story but I still wanted to make a film on that. My mistake was that I made it too entertaining— putting all that action and masala, thinking people would come to watch the film.”

When asked by the moderator if they had a Dalit point of view in his Vedaa team to get the reality right, Advani said it is ‘important to have someone with the same lived experience’. "A lot of people called me up and told me how they live and what happens with them. But the entertainment aspect of telling a story completely makes it impure," he added.

For the discussion, Nikkhil was joined by Mrs director Arati Kadav, Dibakar Banerjee and Prateek Vats.